AWFUL ANNIE

Holes Nisan 22, 2022

ANNIE (1982)
dir: John Huston

AWFUL ANNIE
MAD #236, January 1983
w: Larry Siegel
a: Angelo Torres

Movie based on Broadway musical based on comic strip Little Orphan Annie. The name of the parody is a pun on the strip, even though the strip became just “Annie” after the movie.

Annie (Aileen Quinn) is just another orphan, yearning to someday meet her real parents.

The other orphans help her escape and almost get caught by the cruel Miss Hannigan (Carol Burnett)

She ends up in depression-era New York City. She beats up some kids who are torturing what will be her dog Sandy, then she is caught by police and brought back to the orphanage.

After being brought back, Grace Farrell (Ann Reinking), publicist for a millionaire, comes looking for an orphan to adopt.

She goes to the mansion of Daddy Warbucks (Albert Finney) and witnesses his business dealings.

He doesn't want her around initially, but she grows on him, and they take in a movie. They go see Camille, which came out in 1936 even though this movie takes place in 1932. Or at least I think it does, they never say. FDR, who later appears, is president while the Prohibition is still going on. The only year where the two things were concurrent was 1933. And they never say it's during the Prohibition either but there would be no reason for Miss Hannigan to be making liquor in her bathtub in another scene otherwise.

She also meets his bodyguard Punjab (Geoffrey Holder).

She goes with him to meet FDR, and her optimism wins him over, much to the chagrin of conservative Daddy Warbucks. Here they agree neither want her to sing, though.

Warbucks puts out a reward for the real parents and Mrs. Hannigan's brother Rooster (Tim Curry) and girlfriend Lilly (Bernadette Peters) come in posing as them. They cook up a scheme to get the reward.

If this takes place in 1933, Richard Nixon would have still been in high school and not even met Pat yet. Spiro Agnew was not married until 1942. I know it's only a throwaway joke in a movie parody but these things bother me when I start to think about them.

It's tipped off to Warbucks and his staff that they're not the real parents so a chase ensues to get her back. They rescue her and bring her back to the mansion, throwing a big party that includes the musical finale that features the entire cast.

“Guess what”=”Tomorrow”, for those born after Annie-mania.
The one-page Don Martin strips in this issue were also strips about the movies right after the parodies.

MAD has parodied the comic strip several times over the years, particularly focusing on the fact that the characters' eyes are drawn without pupils. Their parodying the strip goes all the way back to issue #11 in 1953.